Tag Archives: WRAL

It all started in my boss’ office when he told me WRAL was dropping CBS to become an NBC affiliate. Wait..what? I admit, I needed a minute. I mean, we’re the #1 CBS affiliate in the top 25 markets. We’re doing what? He explained why we were dropping CBS and choosing a new partner, NBC. Then, inspiration struck!

I had an immediate vision of a promo campaign. An impossible idea that was never, ever going to be produced, but I couldn’t tell my team because they had no idea what was about to happen.

Fast forward about 4 days, the news was out and the race to launch a new network in 45 days was on. Job #1, THE SUPER BOWL in 14 days.

I mean this a network affiliation change. The biggest promotional challenge in 30 years for WRAL, and we get to announce our new partnership with NBC in Super Bowl 50 on CBS! Why not go for the craziest thing you can think of?

In a brainstorm with the WRAL Creative team. I pitched the crazy, impossible idea with “All it takes is a live, trained peacock. How hard could that be?” The room erupted in laughter and then Promotion Manager Jay Yovanovich said, “Give me a day to find one!” I love a team that’s unstoppable. And this team is incredible.

Literally, 24 hours later Jay had found the only live, imprinted peacock in the United States. Where? North Carolina, of course.Enter serendipity. Turns out, the Sylvan Heights Bird Park had the idea 6 months ago to imprint this baby peacock because “some NBC station somewhere might want to use it one day.” Seriously.

Now, we need a voice actor with a British accent who can pull off one of the creative ideas we have. Who answers the phone at the bird park? The director, who happens to have the exact voice we want and he has done voice over work! This is beginning to feel a lot like destiny.

Not only did we have a live, trained peacock. It could be brought to the WRAL Newsroom for the shoot. Ok, that opens things up! The creative team got to work. We wrote, rewrote, brainstormed, laughed our heads off, and wrote some more. In about 24 hours, we had taken a singular idea and made something bigger and better as a team!

Let’s back up and talk strategy. What’s the mission? The audience is confused by what an affiliation change is. Even my Mother called and asked me how I felt about leaving WRAL after 28 years! (No, Mom, I’m not moving.) So, yes, we need to be creative but we must also be clear.

3 Goals for the Launch

Create a buzz. We produced a 6-spot teaser campaign to get the idea going that there’s something very unusual happening in the WRAL Newsroom. These spots launched on social and web 3 days before the Super Bowl, pushing people to the game.

Be remembered. It’s very difficult for a local station to stand out in a sea of bazillion dollar ad agency commercials in the Super Bowl. And, frankly, humor is hard to do. But I thought we had a concept that would absolutely deliver on our 3 goals, and I thought it would be memorable.

Kill confusion. Answer viewer questions in a simple and sticky way. We produced an arsenal of these as we saw common questions emerge.

A 17-spot campaign produced in about seven days, once we knew we had the peacock! Ever heard the saying “Teamwork makes the dream work.” Well, the WRAL Creative Team was absolutely incredible on this. It truly was the most fun I’ve ever had at work.

It should be noted that in the midst of all that, we had a 3 day blackout on DIRECTV, an ice storm, and our “local” team, the Carolina Panthers, made it to the Super Bowl! Honestly, it was the most insane 2 weeks of my nearly 30 year career in television. But hey, I’d be bored if I worked at the bank.

I’d love to know your thoughts on the campaign and whether we fulfilled our mission.

Now, in 16 days, WRAL becomes an NBC affiliate and there are about 148 other items on our punch list. Gotta go.

A :60 brand image promo conceptualized, written, blocked, shot and edited in 14 hours by a four person team at WRAL Creative.

After 27 years at WRAL, the CBS affiliate in Raleigh, NC, I bleed PMS 279 blue. I grew up watching this station in the Charlie Gaddy era. I know its soul and am now part of its DNA. This spot started with a document I wrote to help our team understand our brand voice, why we do what we do, the way we do it, and the values that guide our decisions. The WRAL Creative team took that document and adapted it for the screen.

It’s worth noting, a promo like this only works if your news anchors are authentically connected, real people who truly live the words they’re speaking. WRAL News anchors Debra Morgan and David Crabtree have a combined 40+ years as the faces of our brand. They are truly, selfless servants. What you see is what you get, every single day. It’s a delight and a privilege to channel their heart and souls onto the screen.

We are, WRAL.

“You can’t fake caring about people. Eventually, that will show. Plus, how exhausting would that be?!” Debra Morgan

I’ve been outraged more times than I can count since this all started. The first video of this woman being dragged like a carcass out of that elevator. Not one but TWO men standing over her, neither with the slightest care about her well-being. The sham press conference with the victim essentially taking responsibility for the crime against her. You know the rest.

(AP Photo/Patrick Semansky, File)

Let’s get something straight. Don’t show the knockout video. Every single organization that’s still showing it is part of the domestic violence problem. Every time that’s shown, that woman is victimized again and again. Just have some guts and STOP.

Now, one of the gifts of working in television is the ability to take on an issue and make a difference. A team of co-workers from WRAL and FOX 50 gathered around a table to brainstorm a plan to do something with the power of our television stations. Within a few hours those ideas grew into a multi-media campaign across Capitol Broadcasting Company‘s television and radio stations, websites and even our minor league baseball team, the Durham Bulls. Less than 24 hours later we had a plan to launch a campaign in the Steelers/Ravens game, on the premiere of Thursday Night Football on CBS.

Yes, we gave up thousands of dollars in ad inventory to run a PSA, two actually. A :60 in pre-game and this :90 in halftime:

Ironically, two account executives from WRAL and FOX 50 have been working on a domestic violence initiative for more than a year, bringing together a coalition of agencies working on this issue. Ray Rice gave us the opportunity to get people to listen.

The NFL game, which featured the Ravens (Ray Rice’s former team) and the Steelers, reached 147,866 households in the Raleigh-Durham-Fayetteville NC market, averaging a 12.7 rating, 21 share.

9/11 and through 10am on 9/12 generated a total of 683 sessions to the eNOughNC.org website, 14 times the traffic of the the previous days. And, 90% of those sessions were new visitors.

On Twitter, the top 5 trending topics in Raleigh were ALL involved with eNOugh, domestic violence, and the messages we aired on television. And it all happened within about three hours.

We had national social media participation including Washington, Texas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Massachusetts and Ohio.

Results from :60 and :90 PSAs

Incredible social engagement.

This is the magic of twitter.

The dominant conversation in our market.

Three of the top five trending topics locally for four hours.

It took less than 24 hours to plan and execute this on air initiative across Capitol Broadcasting. Thursday, 9/18, we will host a phone bank in our studios staffed with knowledgeable experts to help people in crisis. We hope what we’re starting is a movement of outrage so loud, people can no longer turn away. That domestic and sexual violence can no longer be ignored.

What can you do?

If you’re in it, please reach out and let your community help you. The statewide North Carolina resource is enoughnc.org.

The national domestic violence hotline number is 1-800-799-SAFE.

If you see it or suspect it, please report it to local police.

Next, who’s ready to take on violence against women on television and in the movies? Sign me up.

Morning traffic with a whole new perspective. 3-D maps + GoPro + a terrific lead designer and animator + a traffic reporter with the personality to pull it off.

This new system was the first 3-D traffic system on the air in our market so we wanted to find a unique way to showcase that perspective. This spot was written and produced before we had the traffic system totally built and ready for air, so we were working with only a few maps.

WRAL Lead Designer & Animation Specialist made the magic happen! Congrats to him for winning Promax Gold!

It all started with the Executive Director of the Komen NC Triangle to the Coast affiliate asking if we could make her dream come true. Well, we do love a challenge at WRAL! We’re a station with community focused DNA, partnering with local agencies to bring real and sustained change to important issues. Komen wanted the Triangle Race for the Cure to be the most “social race” in the country. They had a hashtag in mind but needed us to figure out how to show all the people using it on social media on site during the Raleigh Race for the Cure.

2014 Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure: 10,500 Strong

Immediately, I thought of Jenni Hogan and tagboard. Jenni and I share a passion for Social TV and have collaborated several times, first with WRAL as a beta station for her TV Interact product and later on WRAL’s first ever Social TV documentary #missionormoney. Tagboard is a live hashtag hub that aggregates content from twitter, facebook, instagram, vine, google+ and app.net. The tagboard dashboard is tabbed to toggle between LATEST posts (all posts coming in using the hashtag), and FEATURED posts (posts you choose to be seen on the public board). This gives you ultimate control of what content goes ‘live’ on your board. We practiced with it for about two weeks and it worked beautifully onsite at the event. We set up two Samsung 70 inch touchscreen monitors. Next time, I’d like an 80-100+ inch video wall meant to be viewed outside! Can I get a sponsor for that?

WRAL Reporter Tara Lynn and photographer Andrew Cumbee

Komen announced on stage for people to take a selfie and post it using #KomenTri

People were fascinated by the technology and wanted to be part of it!

Komen announced on stage for people to take a selfie and post it using #KomenTri

WRAL reporter Tara Lynn uses touchscreen to show how Social Inspiration Board works.

Anchor Debra Morgan debuts live tagboard for the first time on local TV.

Building it for Live TV Because the full suite of products had not been used on TV before, we had a learning curve. The tagboard engineers and designers collaborated with the WRAL graphics team for a good result.We debuted the live touchscreen mode, fullscreen automated and became the first station to use the live, automated lower third super.

First test of the live lower third that auto scrolls through posts from facebook, twitter, instagram, G+, Vine

WRAL Graphics Producer/Director John Renigar and Lead Designer Steve Loyd working with the functionality of the live lower third

Shelly Leslie with Jenni Hogan via cell phone

Marketing It We named our baby the “Social Inspiration Board.” Our partners at the Komen NC Triangle to the Coast affiliate started promoting usage of the hashtag about two weeks before the event in email blasts, on their web site and social media. WRAL created social share graphics that both the station and Komen posted to our social networks:

Created and posted on twitter, facebook and instagram

Komen posted “how to” photos to twitter, facebook and instagram:

Helping teach people how to participate!

We ran static, as well as Jivox interactive, web ads on WRAL.com:

A variety of web ad sizes gives us maximum exposure on wral.com and WRAL mobile.

Jivox interactive web ad includes live twitter widget.

We promoted on air during newscasts in the week leading up to the race, and the Social Inspiration Board was a key part of our live coverage on race day.

Results #KomenTri trended on twitter in Raleigh for 11 hours. It was the top hashtag for the day on #tagboard in Seattle. “The WRAL campaign trended online for 11 hours, the reach Shelly and her team got for #KomenTri could have easily been over 6 million people with the impressions even higher than that,” Jenni Hogan, Chief Media Officer of #tagboard.

KomenNCTC’s facebook page saw a 453% increase in fans, and a 328% increase in reach. Tagboard reports 660 unique posts, not including shared posts. Twitter made up half of these posts, with Instagram and Facebook making up the other half.

It’s important to not ignore those platforms in live events, as the combination can exponentially increase exposure. We could clearly see a spike in posts during live television coverage that used the live lower third serving as a call to action for people not at the event to get involved by sending messages of inspiration to those participating. Considering, we debuted the Saturday of the Men’s US Open (being played in North Carolina!), the NBA Finals and USA World Cup Soccer … we’re more than pleased with the social results. Oh and the end game for our partners at Komen:

Raised a million dollars for breast cancer research and support.

Social TV is changing the game. You can drive viewers to your content on all your platforms using social media. You can dominate the social chatter in your market with a coordinated effort that includes on air, social and web promotion. Cable channels are doing it and getting big results, so can the locals. We have the opportunity right now to create self-sustaining audiences using content that engages their values. If you’re not experimenting, get started! Complete web/tv coverage of the this event: http://www.wral.com/thousands-put-on-pink-to-race-for-the-cure/13733742/

Google Glass wasn’t built for broadcasting live TV. We don’t know if any other television station has attempted it.

What is it? Google Glass is a wearable, voice-controlled computer with an optical head-mounted display and built in video camera. Glass delivers an augmented reality image to the wearer. It can search the internet, answer dictated questions, take pictures, and record video.

It started by registering with Google as a developer to try to get our hands on the technology. That was taking too long, so WRAL engineer Tony Gupton suggested we get them the way anyone gets the most obscure of objects: eBAY! WRAL Chief of Engineering and Operations Pete Sockett scored and the race was on. How quickly could we learn how it works, figure out how to route the video signal from it to live TV, brainstorm and implement a plan for a continuous live feed for WRAL.com, design on air and web graphics, put together a 4 day broadcast plan, develop and launch a marketing plan to promote the weeklong #WRALGlass event? The answer: 5 days. It takes a village, people.

WRAL Engineer Tony Gupton was lead teacher and problem solver.

WRAL Director of News Operations James Ford and Lead Designer Steve Loyd work on presentation.

Once we had the technology and were figuring out how to operate it, we had to decide what to do with it on air. WRAL Station Manager Jim Rothschild had the idea to have different members of the morning team wear Glass so viewers could see and hear different points of view.

WRAL’s 30-year veteran Morning News anchor Bill Leslie broke the news that he would be first.

@wralbleslie breaks the news on twitter

Bill’s viewpoint gave the audience a chance to see what Bill sees, from the crew chief’s directions, to three robotic cameras, to his co-anchors eating snacks during the commercial breaks. Day one of the #WRALGlass experiment was an eye opener! Bill’s commentary was priceless and we learned that head movements are really exaggerated with Glass.

During a live newscast, the producer is like air traffic control landing six planes at once. WRAL producer Kianey Carter’s day in #WRALGlass will make you appreciate the quick thinking, clear headed, multitaskers that these folks are. Rockstars behind the scenes!

Because so many people don’t know what Google Glass is or what it does, we took a conversational approach to the TV promotion, using the news anchors to demonstrate it. We also felt it was important to show viewers what they’d be seeing during the broadcast. We created web ads to promote #WRALGlass on WRAL.com. We generated more than 480k impressions on twitter using #WRALGlass and got some national press for the experiment.